Arizona SB 1070

02/28/2011

Last session, [75-year old state Rep. Leo Berman's, R-Tyler] bills — like the one restricting illegal immigrants to certain geographical regions or another denying them access to higher education — failed to gain traction in the roughly evenly divided House. But with this session’s Republican supermajority, it could very well be the session of Leo.

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He has filed his own version of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, as well as bills mandating that employers verify employees’ legal status electronically, making English the state’s official language and eliminating birthright citizenship — an issue he hopes provokes a lawsuit he can take all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Another bill would add an 8 percent surcharge on money wired back to Latin America, which he would earmark for hospitals providing free health care to illegal immigrants — who Berman says are bringing in drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, polio, plague and leprosy.

(According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, the only incident of plague in Texas in the last decade was in 2006, and it was contracted during a hunting trip in New Mexico. The most recent case of polio in Texas, contracted during an individual’s travels abroad, was in 1995.)

“We want to make things not uncomfortable, but do things in such a way that they’re going to self-deport,” Berman said.

A first-generation American, Berman knows the significance of immigration in the country’s history. His parents came through Ellis Island in the 1920s — his father from Latvia and his mother from Poland. They learned English, opened a business and flourished. “That was a long time ago,” Berman said. “Now, we have no Ellis Island. We just have a wide-open southern border where people are climbing through the fence, and they are illegal aliens.”

Berman’s stance puts him uncharacteristically at odds with members of the state’s conservative business community, like Texas Association of Business President Bill Hammond, who believes immigration reform is a federal matter. “I think most of what’s being proposed is unconstitutional,” Hammond said. “The Constitution is pretty clear that immigration is a federal matter. I hold Rep. Berman in very high regard and consider him a friend, and as friends will do from time to time, we disagree in this area.”

Berman’s immigration bills, and their heightened chances of moving this session, are one factor that led state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, who is as liberal as Berman is conservative, to call this “the most racist session of the Texas Legislature in a quarter of a century.” Not since the mid-20th century, Burnam said, has the state seen so much legislation focused at subjugating a community of color. “All of this legislation is really directed that way,” he said. “Everybody knows it. They can pretend like it’s not, but it is.”

See also, Texas Tribune article by Ross Ramsey about immigration and the growing Texas hispanic population.

02/22/2011

Hundreds of Texans descended on the state Capitol on Tuesday to draw attention to what they say are dozens of bills that, if passed, would hinder economic development, stymie education and — above all — encourage racial profiling in the Lone Star State.

Some marched and waved signs supporting the United Farm Workers. Others, while cloaked in Texas and U.S. flags, proclaimed that “Texas Can Do Better Than Arizona.” The immigrants’ rights advocates, former military personnel, lawmakers and students — from seemingly every rural and urban sector of the state — rallied and proclaimed that bills like HB 17 and HB 22 would serve only to increase insecurity and distrust within immigrant communities, hinder Texas’ future workforce from being competitive and lead to an increase in crime. The bills, by State Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, would make it a Class B misdemeanor to be in the country without proper documentation, and mandate that school districts report the immigration status of their students. Riddle has also filed HB 1202, which would make it a state jail felony to knowingly and “recklessly” hire an unauthorized worker.

01/27/2011

The voter ID legislation passed by the Texas Senate on Wednesday night may be controversial, but it’s a familiar debate, as is the issue of “sanctuary cities.” Gov. Rick Perry has declared both to be “emergency items” that demand immediate attention by the Legislature.

Less well known but no less controversial are many of the provisions found in more than three dozen immigration-related bills filed so far in the early days of the 82nd legislative session.

State Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has made national headlines for his “birther” bill that would require a candidate for president or vice president of the U.S. to show proof of natural-born citizenship to be placed on the ballot in Texas. He has also filed proposed legislation designed to provoke a legal challenge to the 14th Amendment, which bestows citizenship on anyone born in the U.S., regardless of the status of the child’s parents. House Bill 292, if passed, would prevent a county's local registrar from issuing a birth certificate to a child born to undocumented immigrants in Texas.

“Instead, they will be given a notice of birth, with instructions to take it to their own consulate or embassy to get citizenship papers or a birth certificate from the country of their parents,” Berman said, explaining his bill. “If it passes, we expect to be sued immediately, and that’s exactly what we’re looking for — we want to be sued in federal court so that federal judges will finally read the 14th Amendment.” After that, he said, it’ll only be a matter of time before the federal government realizes the amendment was ratified in 1868 only for those children born in the U.S. to black slaves.

Berman has also authored a bill — HB 294 — that would ban undocumented immigrants from suing legal Texans. They could not seek “equitable relief as a counter claimant or a cross claimant,” according to the legislation.

“If you have an accident with a car driven by an illegal alien, you are going to pay for your own car. But if you hit them, they are going to get an attorney, an abogado, and they are going to try and sue you for everything you’re worth,” he said. “I have asked several lawyers, and they said it is constitutional.”

State Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, an attorney, said lawmakers are entitled to file any bill they wanted, but he said the bill would likely be deemed unconstitutional by the courts.

“The Texas Constitution has an open-courts provision which has always been interpreted to be even stronger than the Bill of Rights,” he said.

01/24/2011

Harsh anti-immigrant laws enacted in communities across the country – promoted by national nativist organizations that want to severely limit immigration – have burdened taxpayers with millions in legal expenses, inflamed racial tensions and devastated businesses, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The report found that Kobach's efforts left these communities with huge legal bills, unworkable laws and social turmoil.

The town of Hazleton has run up $2.8 million in legal costs to defend its ordinance. Merchants in the town's Latino business district reported drops in business of 20 to 50 percent.

Farmers Branch is reported to owe $3.7 million in legal fees – costs that have led the town to cut personnel funding and its special events budget. The town even decided to outsource its library.

Fremont raised its property taxes in anticipation of $750,000 in legal expenses. Rather than defend a provision of its law, Valley Park repealed a provision punishing landlords who rent to undocumented immigrants.

In addition, Arizona hired Kobach as a consultant to its defense counsel in a case against its law, which by October had cost the state more than $1 million. Boycotts of the state sparked by the law are believed to have cost Arizona $141 million in convention spending.

But the social cost of all may be that these ill-advised laws are distracting the country from the obvious need to undertake comprehensive immigration reform at a time when the system is clearly broken. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, interviewed for the report, put it like this: "The worst part is all the heat, light and hatred surrounding S.B. 1070 has left us deadlocked on the bigger, more important task in front of us – actually passing true comprehensive immigration reform. We're so busy talking about Kris Kobach's train wreck of a law, we have no time to treat the injured lying on both sides of the track."

01/06/2011

"Proposing state enforcement of immigration laws can produce strange bedfellows.

"The Texas ACLU and an El Paso county sheriff who supports the controversial Secure Communities program stood side by side at the State Capitol in Austin Thursday to denounce pre-filed, immigration-related legislation similar to Arizona’s SB 1070. A conservative businessman was added to the mix, indicating lawmakers intent on rounding up Texas’ undocumented population might have a harder time than initially presumed.

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"Wiles and Burke were a part of a coalition that included the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Texas Residents United for a Stronger Texas, and the Reform Immigration for Texas Alliance.

"Wiles said policies that require local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws would take resources away from where it’s needed.

“Police departments are not growing, many of them are shrinking yet the workload has not. So we want … to add an additional workload on officers and take them away from doing what the citizens expect them to do, which is to be in their neighborhood targeting criminals that are burglaring their homes or stealing their car,” he said.

"Through the Secure Communities program, administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, local law enforcement compares the fingerprints of anyone arrested against those in a Department of Homeland Security database to determine if the individual can be removed under immigration laws. Some organizations, including the ACLU, have called it a tool that enables racial profiling. Wiles defended the practice, however.

“You are talking about issues of criminals in our community, whether they are undocumented immigrants or not, and that is certainly a concern of law enforcement. So where we have the opportunity to take a criminal who is undocumented, hold them accountable for the crime and then deport them, is a definite benefit for our community for everybody,” he said.

"said the proposed immigration legislation would do nothing to curtail the violence across the border, specifically in Ciudad Juárez, refuting claims by lawmakers that an immigration crackdown would stymie the bloodshed.

“These issues that are occurring in Juárez have nothing to do with the immigration problem. Those issues are about the drug trade and about cartels fighting each other,” he said."

El Paso County law enforcement boss to appear at demonstration Thursday

"It's split among my colleagues on whether we should be out here just stopping individuals without probable cause, and questioning them on their immigration status," said Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton, who believes the proposals invite profiling.

On Thursday, El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles planned to join immigrant advocacy groups at the Capitol, where they're expected to denounce bills targeting illegal immigrants as bad for the Texas economy and constitutionally unworkable.

"Still, the National Immigration Forum, a pro-reform group, concludes that even if Tomball state Rep. Debbie Riddle’s proposal, known as HB 17, fails, immigration advocates will face “an uphill battle” in an upcoming Texas legislative session that will consider numerous immigration-related measures.

"While some Texas business leaders “have expressed concern about replicating SB 1070 in Texas . . . their ability to staunch the tide of anti-immigrant legislation sure to come from the House and Senate is untested,” the report states."

12/31/2010

"Legislative leaders in at least half a dozen states say they will propose bills similar to a controversial law to fight illegal immigration that was adopted by Arizona last spring, even though a federal court has suspended central provisions of that statute.

"The efforts, led by Republicans, are part of a wave of state measures coming this year aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

"Legislators have also announced measures to limit access to public colleges and other benefits for illegal immigrants and to punish employers who hire them.

"Next week, at least five states plan to begin an unusual coordinated effort to cancel automatic United States citizenship for children born in this country to illegal immigrant parents.

"Opponents say that effort would be unconstitutional, arguing that the power to grant citizenship resides with the federal government, not with the states. Still, the chances of passing many of these measures appear better than at any time since 2006, when many states, frustrated with inaction in Washington, began proposing initiatives to curb illegal immigration."

12/02/2010

"The mainstream media is finally exposing “the man behind the curtain” of America’s anti-immigrant movement. This week, Village Voice Media published a piece entitled, “FAIR-y Tales” by Terry Greene Sterling, an award winning journalist and Writer-in-Residence at Arizona State University. Sterling’s in-depth investigative journalism blows the lid of off the John Tanton network and its anti-immigrant organizations—CIS, FAIR, IRLI (drafters of SB1070), Social Contract Press and Numbers USA. It even includes an interview with John Tanton, the unapologetic architect of the anti-immigrant movement in America."